No Rest For The Wicked
by otherhawk
Summary: Pre Series. While at Cambridge Illya struggles to balance being a student and a spy.


**Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with MFU**

 **A/N: Not especially dark, but maybe a little bleak. And mostly written in airports.**

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He stumbled off the last train from London and would undoubtedly have fallen if a passing station porter hadn't managed to grab him with a startled cry of "'Ere! Watch out!"

"I am sorry," he said as he regained his footing, careful to flatten his vowels into an approximation of the upper class bray of his current contemporaries. "I'm afraid I must have had one too many."

"Right." The porter gazed at him with an odd frown and Illya hoped he wasn't alert enough to realise that if anything he smelled of blood and smoke, not alcohol. "Well, mind how you go."

"I shall," he nodded earnestly and set off on the long trek back to the college.

His mission had been a complete success, despite the fact that he'd only been briefed a few days ago and so had basically no time to prepare. His masters would be pleased. The plans had been acquired and passed off to Melnikov, who had given him a grunt of acknowledgement – high praise, really – before he got into a taxi and drove off to whatever decadent bourgeoisie pleasures had enthralled him this week, leaving Illya to summon up the strength to walk back to Liverpool Street Station and buy a third class ticket back to Cambridge. Out of his own meagre KGB stipend, he might add. Oh, how the other half live.

The pain, which had receded a little as he'd pretended to doze in the corner of the railway carriage, was now back full force as he walked. He kept his expression blank and his hands hanging loose by his side, and made sure not to obviously favour his bad leg. There weren't too many people around at this time of night, and he didn't think he'd been identified, let alone tailed, but it was among the most basic tenants of his existence; show no weakness. And obviously a normal student on a night out shouldn't be coming back injured anyway.

He spotted a group of rowdy undergrads just as he turned onto Trinity Street and, recognising them, he smiled slightly and quickened his pace as they headed towards the college. This was perfect. Even as they approached the Great Gate, full of loud, drunken optimism, the porters were coming out towards them, attention fully on the obvious disruption.

"Hey, Binky, it's good old Binky, everyone." A vacuous cheer went up. "You'll let us in, won't you? And you won't say a word to anyone. It'll be our little secret."

Illya quickly walked past further down the street, pressing into the shadows, leaving the hopelessly optimistic drunken speech behind. It should keep the porters distracted for a few minutes at least. Time enough for him to vault up onto _this_ window, climb _that_ drainpipe and swing out over the wall and down into the court. Which all sounded easy enough but truthfully when he dropped down onto the ground his arms were wrapped tightly around his ribs in a futile gesture to keep his chest where it was, and he was breathing so hard he thought his lungs might explode anyway.

The rules weren't so strict for graduate students, he thought, but it was better to be discreet where possible. He did not want anyone puzzling over his movements and he certainly didn't want anyone discussing his behaviour with the Soviet educational liaison. Besides, he had a feeling that committing high level espionage on the British government came under the heading of 'behaviour likely to bring the college into disrepute'.

Now all he had to do was climb the four narrow flights of stairs to his room, get patched up the best he could, finish those notes he was supposed to do for Dr Raymond's labs, and try and study a bit more for Dr Hendrick's class because he _always_ called on Illya trying to catch him out, oh, and he hadwanted to organise his research for his dissertation a little more as well, since he had that meeting with his advisor scheduled for Monday.

Not for the first time he felt a little overwhelmed.

Resolutely he pushed all the thoughts out of his head and focused on getting upstairs, hoping he didn't meet anyone he knew. The last thing he wanted was to stand and talk, he wasn't absolutely sure he would be able to manage the reassuring civility. He had spent a lot of time building up a reputation as a quiet, studious 'chap' – without any real friends, but friendly enough that he was never short of someone to study with or spend an evening with in the pub – purely in the interests of maintaining his cover, naturally. It had been a while since he had done that; he had been too busy. But it would be a shame to let the work on his cover slide, and besides it was always amusing to see Henry's face when Illya inevitably beat him at darts, and Lars still owed him a drink, and Clive had been talking about a paper in the British Journal of Applied Physics about measuring the half life of Radon that they'd both agreed had some interesting features...

For his cover. Always for his cover. That was all that mattered.

His knee gave way on the stairs and he grabbed the bannister to catch himself as he fell, opening up a fresh wave of pain down his side as he did and biting down hard on his tongue to stifle the cry. Waking the entire building would be one quick way to make the situation worse.

Taking a deep breath he silently started to run through a litany of all the swear words he could think of, in all the languages he knew even a smattering of. One of his more satisfying concentration exercises, if one he was unlikely to embark on aloud. At any rate it was enough to bring him to his room and he unlocked the door and fell through with a soft groan of relief, barely managing to kick the door shut behind him.

The room was small and cramped, right beneath the water boiler and with tiny windows that meant it was always swelteringly hot and airless. All the students in the rooms around had offered their commiserations – he had been agreed to have drawn the short straw when it came to room allocation

Edward had laughed and said "Better too hot than too cold, what?"

Illya had just stared at him, unblinking. "I am _Russian,_ " he had pointed out and just as he had expected, the winter had not been anywhere near cold enough to trouble him. The temperature had seldom dipped below thirty. He was expecting the room to be worse come summer. He would probably have to strip down and study in his boxers, and hell mend any visitors who happened by without knocking.

For now though the unbearable temperature was just one more hardship and he was removing his clothes for quite a different reason. He stood in front of the spindly mirror and ran probing fingers over the damage, his jaw clenched tight. Three broken ribs, he thought, and his left knee was purple and swollen, but the long scrapes and gashes that ran all the way down his right-hand side from shoulder to calf were more immediately concerning. That was from when he'd been dragged behind the car, and he could see a worrying amount of gravel stuck in the wounds, along with pieces of fabric from the remains of his boxers and trousers which had been shredded along with his skin.

Those had been his best suit trousers as well. And he was going to need to get rid of the pair he'd been wearing tonight rather quickly – it would be a little difficult to explain how an innocent Russian physics student came to be in possession of a 'borrowed' pair of Metropolitan police uniform trousers...

That was a problem for later. Right now he sighed as he awkwardly bent over and pulled out the box beneath his bed and found a half empty bottle of antiseptic and splashed it liberally down his body, digging his fingernails deep into his palms as the burning took hold. Honestly, he'd swear the prevention was worse than the disease, except he'd had injuries get infected before, and he'd watched people dying of sepsis, and he'd much rather have the quick pain than the slow death, thank you.

Tweezers. He pulled a pair out of the box and hesitated. This would have to be easier under running water, wouldn't it? Certainly the evidence would be easier to clean away, even if the risk of discovery was higher. He considered for a long moment, his mind working sluggishly. It was long after midnight, after all. Anyone else awake right now probably had other things on their mind than personal hygiene.

Decided, he pulled a towel around himself to cover the worst of his injuries and hid the rest by shrugging on his threadbare dressing gown – although in the event, since he walked along to the showed block without seeing anyone else, he hardly needed to bother.

He took the furthest shower stall from the door and carefully drew the curtain shut, trusting privacy to politeness. The water was lukewarm, but it would serve his purpose, and he set to work digging through his flesh for the shards of stone and grit. It was hard going – painful and slow, and the fact that the stream of water turned red immediately, flowing towards the drain in the middle of the room was something of a problem. If anyone came in right now they would probably think that they were on the set of a horror film. At any rate, they couldn't fail to be alarmed. Chyort, he should have stayed in his room.

This would be easier with two people, he acknowledged, as he twisted around trying to reach a particularly large lump that was sticking out of his back just around his kidney. He imagined, for a moment, waking one of his fellow students to ask them to come and help him with first aid and the thought brought a wry smile of amusement to his face. He could imagine the shock and disgust even before the suspicion and mistrust. Hardly an option. And certainly he wasn't about to tell Melnikov or Domnin that he was hurt. They weren't interested, unless it was an injury that would put him out of action, and if they even _suspected_ he might be more of a liability than an asset...well, quiet execution was probably easier than repatriation.

Even back home doctors might treat his injuries but they were brusque and detached when they did so, their treatment often rough. He couldn't blame them; all too often an agent who was hurt was an agent who had failed, and the consequences of failure had a way of being contagious. He found he preferred to trouble them as little as possible.

He could get through this and he did not need anyone else. He had been taking care of himself since he was ten years old, even considering letting another do so was foolishness.

Abruptly he realised that his legs wouldn't hold his weight any longer and he sank slowly down to the grimy tiled floor. He was shaking. Shock or exhaustion, he wondered detachedly from somewhere far away. Either was possible. It had been a very long few days.

He let his head tilt back against the wall, the now-cold water running down his face, and pretended he was simply resting, taking a breather before he stood up and got on with the things that had to be done.

Really, there was nothing he should be complaining about. He was here studying at one of the world's finest universities, receiving the kind of education his parents could never have dreamed of. Yes, KGB...scholarships...came with a lot of strings attached, but his curse was that he wanted the strings as well. Science fascinated him, no question, but the truth was, given a choice between working in a lab all day or, as earlier, hanging by his fingernails from a window ledge for an hour in order to get the opportunity to steal the plans for a new submarine base, well, he was going to choose the danger every time. It was a fault in his own character, he thought. Investigating the secrets of the universe should be enough, but he craved action. Except really, he wanted both – and he could have them here, for a little while at least, as long as he worked hard and did as he was told.

It was his intellect and aptitude for both science and languages that had saved him from more distasteful work. There were others who had his physical attributes and who were as skilled and smart as he, but the ability to have all that while being placed as a masters student in Cambridge University? That was apparently a rarer gift. It was a far better cover than the usual cultural attache or whatever – if anything he was suspected of being a tool of Soviet propaganda, a shining example of the achievements of Soviet youth, not a hardened KGB agent. But all that depended on him maintaining his grades. At the moment he was fourth in his class, and that was barely satisfactory, never mind that the first two were geniuses who were undoubtedly going to change the world - something that he was unlikely to ever achieve.

He was grateful for this opportunity though, that was the point. And he certainly wasn't going to squander it simply because he was a little tired.

He sat up straight, his legs spread out in front of him, and he wielded the tweezers with grim determination. After a while he barely noticed the pain, just the white hot adrenaline and the water washing it all away.

It came as a surprise then when he heard the door swing open and someone walk in. He tensed immediately, gripping the tweezers like a weapon, only relaxing fractionally when he heard Charles' querulous voice. "Is there someone in here? Do you know what time it is?"

"It's me, Illya Nikovich," he said, trying to sound perfectly normal while he gazed frantically at the remains of the blood circling the drain, too far for him to do anything about unless he wanted to burst out of the stall and give Charles a good look at where it had come from.

"Oh. Right." Charles sounded surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"I am getting cleaned up," he offered carefully. "I had a bit of an accident. I fell. It was muddy."

"Right," Charles said again. "Well, try not to be too long about it, some of us are trying to sleep and these pipes do make a hell of a racket. And try not to use up _all_ the hot water, there's a good fellow."

"Da," he said agreeably, wishing Charles would just _leave_ and let him get on with it.

No such luck. "I say, is that blood?" he exclaimed suddenly.

"I fell," Illya reminded him quickly. "Is nothing."

"Oh." There was a pause and a conscious laugh. "You know, somehow you sound a lot more Russian when I can't see your face. I suppose it's because you look so normal."

He bit his tongue in irritation and concentrated on smoothing his accent out into what the English deemed an acceptable level to treat him as a near equal – enough to be quaintly exotic, not enough to be a threat. "Possibly I am just tired. Goodnight, Charles."

"Right. Goodnight, Eel."

He winced at the nickname, but since he heard the door close a moment later, he decided just to be thankful for small mercies. Charles was hardly likely to be suspicious. Probably even if he had caught Illya holding his KGB identity card he would have just let it wash over him...although admittedly as said card was in Russian, a language of which Charles didn't speak a word, that would be understandable. His point had been that Charles was oblivious to everything outside of his narrow sphere of interests.

He managed to stand up with difficulty, hanging on to the curtain, and once he was sure the shower room was, if not clean, at least free of blood, he hobbled back to the relative safety of his own room and sat heavily on the bed, contemplating the box on the floor. Biting his lip, he strapped up his knee before turning his attention to his ribs. They really needed wrapped as well, however that would be extremely painful on the wounds down his side. The question really was which would, untreated, cause him more of a hindrance in class tomorrow? Hmmm. Properly bound the ribs would allow him to sit, albeit stiffly, and more around. The only danger would be if someone touched him, and he hardly encouraged that anyway. Yes, that was probably the best plan.

After splashing on more antiseptic, he took a deep breath and started wrapping his ribs as tightly as he could, a process which involved both hands, his teeth, and, at one point, the bedpost. But eventually it was done and he stood there, breathless, but relatively certain that his chest was going to remain intact for the moment anyway. Ah, well, he would live to fight another day.

He took a longing look at the bottle of vodka he kept on the window sill concealed behind a plant pot, and an even more longing look at his bed, then he fetched his copy of Methods of Theoretical Physics and settled down to do some work.

There would be time enough to rest when he was dead.

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 **A/N: Thanks for reading, what did you think?**


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